


woman.

by orphan_account



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Hurt, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-16 22:40:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20610530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: John doesn’t know what it is about Rook that has him sitting on his front porch every night, like a lover waiting for their significant other to return home from war, that renders him speechless whenever she shows up at his door (or window) - bruised, cut, bloodied but smiling, like she’s found her solace from the storm, that leaves him craving her like a junkie aching from withdrawal.John doesn’t know what it is about Rook, but when she’s in his home, in his bed, in his arms - there is one irrefutable fact.He loves her.Maybe that’s all that matters.





	woman.

_If I’d be so inclined_

_To climb up beside you_

_Would you tell me_

_That the time just isn’t right?_

He waits for rejection, expects it at this point, but to his surprise, Rook doesn’t object to him cozying up to her side.

To further his shock, her fingers wind through the hair at the nape of his neck and thread through it softly, as if she’s stroking a lion’s mane, indulging in the feelof something lethal and beautiful.

He buries his face in her throat, his lips against her pulse, feels it slow alongside the blood rushing through his ears. 

_And if I should ever find_

_The key you hide so well_

_Will you tell me_

_That I can spend the night?_

Rook’d planned to leave before he woke up. 

Because he knows. 

About the things she’s done, the things she’s capable of, the monster that she tries to wrangle under control but slips out under the right provocation. 

The things that John has done - as numerous and morally questionable as they are - pale in comparison to the atrocities Rook’s committed. 

Surely, he’d realized as much and had decided to keep this relationship purely physical, possibly break it off altogether. 

But that morning, instead of a scolding or strong persuasion to confess and atone for her sins - lithe, tattooed arms fasten around Rook’s waist, unyielding, and he tucks his head under her chin.

“I make the best French toast in all of Hope County.”

His voice spills across her throat, hot and low against the vulnerable flesh, makes shivers unfurl down her spine.

“Is that right?” Rook asks, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, feeling his smile against her skin.

_Leaving your smell_

_On my coat_

_Leaving your taste_

_On my shoulder..._

John hasn’t seen her in hours, days, weeks.

It’s too long, long enough for him to call out to her via radio, text her paragraphs through the phone, his voice raw after filling up her voicemail box, but never receiving as much as a whisper in response. 

He doesn’t take off his coat, even in the scorching heat, because the spice of scorched earth, the crisp edge of sandalwood, the molten heat of gunpowder lingers in the fabric and he can pretend like she’s here, like she’d never left, like she was where she belonged - in his ranch, by his side, in his arms. 

The bite marks that littered his neck and shoulders have faded, but he can clearly make-out her taste against his skin, sweet and tangy and delicious. 

_I still fail_

_To understand_

_What it is_

_About this woman._

He can’t explain it.

There aren’t enough words in the dictionary to define what Rook does to him, the feelings she evokes.

When she does show-up, wearing a sheepish smile and adorning a few new cuts and scrapes, bumps and bruises, dirt and blood... 

He can barely contain himself. 

_If I could bottle up_

_The chills that you give me_

_I would keep them_

_In a jar next to my bed._

He stifles a shiver at the dulcet tones of her voice, swallowing a groan at the promise in her words.

Chills roll down his spine as her voice dips deeper, praise spilling from her lips, vows to treat her baby boy like a prince, whispering delicious filth into the radio that catapults every drop of blood in his body south.

His pants are tight, there’s sweat beading at his hairline and he’s panting as if he’s run across the county.

_And if I should ever draw_

_A picture of a woman_

_It is you that would come_

_Flowing from my pen._

“If this whole ‘cult’ thing doesn’t work out, you’d make a hell of a tattoo artist. A legitimate one, I mean. Where your building of operation is an actual building and not a BDSM-playground-slash-apocalyptic-bunker.”

He doesn’t tell her about the rough sketches he crafts in his scarce free-time, about how they might start off as little doodles or ideas, but one way or another, they end up as her.

Because she is his muse. 

When she’s crashed out in his bed, his body tangled intricately with hers, he’ll marvel at the sight of her naked skin, the moonlight spilling in through the window giving him ample opportunity to trace her scars - old and new - with his fingers, biting his bottom lip at the idea of the tattoos he’d give her, permanently marking her as his, the artist and his beautiful canvas. 

_Leaving your clothes_

_On my floor_

_Making me walk_

_Out the door..._

Rook’d left her clothes behind one morning.

Namely, her shirt and jacket.

She must’ve taken his by mistake.

Not that John minds. 

As a matter of fact, he’d prefer if she always wore his clothes, so people would recognize, with a single glance, that she is his and his alone.

When she comes back home a few days later, wearing his button-down - with a few bloodstains and tears that hadn’t been there before - and a sheepish smile, he’s a goner. 

“Sorry about your Armani...”

“Looks better on you, anyway,” he murmurs against her neck, thinking of various scenarios in which her wardrobe is slowly but surely replaced with nothing but his button-downs, his vests, his jackets.

The thought makes him salivate. 

_And I still fail_

_To understand_

_What it is_

_About this woman._

John doesn’t know what it is about Rook.

Fuck, it might be every single thing about her - from her happy-go-lucky philosophy to her dry, scathing wit to the rumble of her laugh to the tenderness in her touch to the love in her eyes — but he’d do anything, everything, again.

As long as she ends-up by his side.

_Helplessly melting_

_As I stand next to the sun_

_And as she burns me,_

_I am screaming out for more._

Rook’s too good for him.

Everyone knows this.

Except Rook.

Because she’s constantly telling him otherwise, that it’s the other way around, that he’s the best thing she’s ever had but she doesn’t deserve him, that if he knew what was best, he’d either leave and never look back or put a bullet in her skull right now. 

John kisses her before she can put the revolver in his hand.

_Drink every drop of liquid_

_Heat that I’ve become_

_Pop me open, spill me out_

_On to the floor. _

Long. 

It’s been too long since he’d seen her. When she bursts through his door one morning - the sun is barely peaking over the horizon, the sky is soft hues of pink and orange, the world hasn’t started spinning yet - he’s in the kitchen, brewing a fresh pot of coffee because he can never sleep through the night without having her in his arms. 

He isn’t able to get as much as a syllable out - blood, there’s so much blood staining her clothes,  what the fuck happened \- before she’s rushing over to him like a soldier with a mission, his shirt collar bunched in her fingers, her hips pinning his to the kitchen island, her lips claiming his with a vigor and ferocity that belies something desperate beneath it, which is bewildering because it’s John that acts like this, not her.

He wants to ask her what’s wrong,  he does, is about to ask the question the second they separate to gasp for air, but she doesn’t waste a second with such trivial things, has her mouth over his as quickly as it’d left, their chests flush together.

_“Please.”_

The word is a breathless, desperate rasp out of his mouth, vocal cords raw.

John whines before he can think better of it, because the blood in his brain is rushing south at an inexplicably fast rate, leaving his thoughts hazy because all he can think about is her dexterous fingers.

“Please what, gorgeous?”

There is absolutely no possible way he choked at hearing those words spill from her lips, sultry and low and tantalizing.

Except - he does. 

John is going to combust. 

Any drop of blood that isn’t sloshing in his loins - boiling at the intense desire to tangle his fingers in her hair, snare an arm around her waist, crush her to him so that there isn’t as much as an atom between them - floods his cheeks, a pink shade so vibrant that his beard can’t hide it.

“Tell me what you want, baby.”

Fuck, he isn’t going to last long. 

The combination of her deliciously husky voice, her dexterous fingers traveling across his chest with intent, her hypnotizing, liquid gold eyes that are so impossibly stunning that he could drown in their depths and never voice a single complaint.

** _“You. I want you. Please.”_ **

“That’s what I like to hear, angel,” she hums, the hand that’d been resting on the back of his neck, massaging the tense muscles in his shoulders, seamlessly sliding into his hair, tilting his head up, a few degrees to the side, pecking him chastely, and then the fingers of her opposite hand dexterously undoing his belt, button, zipper—

Coherent sentences, let alone a single intelligible word, are impossible to compose when she slips her hand into his boxers, her thumb smearing the pre-cum leaking out of the head around him.

John chases after her lips, hips bucking into her hand, but she has something else in mind, sinking to her knees in an fluid, elegant motion for something so lascivious, replacing her hand with her mouth, effortlessly taking him inside her wondrously sinful mouth.

His head thumps back against the cabinets, a wanton, lewd moan slipping out of his mouth, something he tries to stifle into his palm, when Rook’s fingers lace through his, topaz eyes peering up at him through dark lashes.

_Don’t._

_Want to hear you._

_Need to hear you._

Rook’s said these words so often - John’s never been particularly vocal with any of the people he’s slept with in the past, but Rook evokes these noises with hardly any effort, refuses to let him cover his mouth because they’re music to her ears -that he reads them in the smoldering gaze directed up at him, mouth too busy driving him to the point of madness.

One tattooed hand grips the marble counter behind him for dear life, the black ink a startling contrast to his stark white knuckles, while the opposite tangles loosely in thick chestnut waves.

Rook hums her approval, using both of her hands to pin his hips to the counter, a fierce hold that’s stronger than any chains, shackles or cuffs, is guaranteed to leave finger-shaped bruises within a few hours.

By then, John will be in the bathroom, staring at himself - at them - tracing the marks with delicate, awed fingers, terrified that if he touched them too hard, they’d disappear and he’d lose the only reminder of his deputy until the next time she’d visit.

If... 

If she visits.

The thought that there might be days, weeks, months that go by without so much as a word from her, only to find out that she’s been killed as plagued more than a handful of his nightmares - are the primary focus of his nightmares - but he refuses to think about that.

... Well, he can’t really think about it. 

Least, not in this moment.

When Rook is sucking his brains out through his cock. 

She traces the vein running along the underside of his cock with her tongue, hand pumping him at a torturously wonderful pace, before she’s swirling her tongue around the head in that inconceivably perfect way that has him panting, stuttering, cursing.

“R-Rook, I’m not— I’m going—“

The little minx knows exactly what he’s trying to vocalize and, of course, reacts accordingly.

Takes more of him into her mouth - the mere sight of his dick sinking inside those red, plush lips has his knees buckling, would’ve sent him crashing to the floor, makes him incredibly thankful for her vice-grip of his hips - and moans around him, the vibrations tingling from the nerve endings in his cock to frying the brain cells in his skull. 

The groan punched out of his stomach, the twitch of his cock in her mouth, the fingers loosely tangled in her hair tightening to that euphoric blend of pleasure and pain that Rook lives off of is all the encouragement Rook needs to finish off her baby boy, nice and proper - taking every last inch of him inside her mouth, delectably hot and encompassing and perfect, and swallowing around him, constricting his cock in velvet heat that has John wailing in ecstasy. 

His seed paints the molten heat of her throat, stripes of cum that don’t so much as leak out of the corners of her mouth, Rook working him through the tremors and aftershocks, thorough and steady, easing off his dick with an obscene  ‘pop’ that floods John’s stomach with liquid desire, regardless of the fact he’d just had a glimpse, a taste, a feel of something more perfect than paradise.

Rook’s hands move from his hips to his knees, where his boxers and jeans are bunched, gingerly easing his pliant cock inside, zipping him up, swollen lips kissing the metal with an intimacy that has the blood that’d flooded his cock mere moments before paint his cheeks, that tint the tips of his ears pink, that has him crumbling to the floor in a satiated, flustered, panting heap of boneless limbs.

“You good, baby?” Rook asks, voice deep and fucked-out, a husky question that has his dick swelling. 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she runs her thumb along her bottom lip, mouth parting to plop it in her mouth for one last taste—

But John’s fingers coil around her wrist and he sucks her thumb inside his mouth without a grain of hesitation.

A noise leaves Rook’s mouth. 

A moan, a groan, a hiss - it’s impossible to make out when John’s focus is laving his tongue around the calloused digit, moaning around the joints and bones, the taste of himself on her skin so unbelievably arousing that his cock swells.

The digit leaves his mouth, only for Rook to replace them with her lips, spilling even more of his taste across his tongue, John‘s whine and Rook’s moan blending together in a beautifully erotic symphony.

“What... What was that for?” John asks, dazed and feverish, licking his lips for more, greedy for every ounce of what’s been so graciously given to him.

Rook smiles - a slow, beautiful curve of her lips that has John’s pulse skipping - cupping his bearded jaw, thumb tracing his bottom lip.

“Can’t I wish my boyfriend a good morning?”

John’s breath stutters in his throat, the word ‘boyfriend’ short-circuiting in his head, his chest filling with something ridiculously giddy and electrifyingly ecstatic at the word, a word that’s juvenile and simple giving him not only delicious satisfaction but electrifying infatuation.

She’s rising off the ground in an elegant flourish, stretching her arms above her head, joints cracking as sinewy muscles reach for the ceiling, sighing in relief as the bones shift.

“You aren’t staying for breakfast?” John asks, in a voice that resembles his usual timbre, though his blood hasn’t slowed in his veins - boils hot under his skin, licking his lips at the pale flesh exposed beneath the hem of her shirt.

“I’ve already had my fill, sweetheart. Give my compliments to the chef, yeah?”

Rook winks, about to take her leave, give him a rough estimate about her whereabouts for the next few days or week, but John’s regained enough of his brain cells for basic motor function, providing him with enough energy for his fingers to meld to her hips and pin them to the island.

“All due respect, darling... I was talking about my breakfast.”

Rook blinks down at him, lips parted and eyes wide in silent awe, before she’s chuckling.

“And you say that I’ll be the death of you.”

That chuckle quickly dissolves into an unabashed moan as John’s nimble fingers make quick work of her tattered jeans, rubbing her through the thin material of her boxer shorts.

“‘But what a way to go, hm?’” John quotes her, salivating at the soaked fabric beneath his fingertips, indulging in the hands that thread through his messy hair, the beautiful noise he elicits when his tongue slides inside her irresistible heat.

What a way to go, indeed.

_Leaving your smell_

_On my coat_

_Leaving your taste_

_On my shoulder..._

Things have been going well— no, scratch that, things have been exceptional since Rook had walked into his life. 

Well, more accurately, landed in a helicopter, walked into their church with an arrest warrant for his brother, only for aforementioned helicopter to crash into the ground not forty-five seconds after the vehicle had risen from the compound -  “God will not let them take me.” \- but it’s true.

John remembers - in vivid detail - when he’d learned that Faith, their darling little siren that was willing to do anything, everything, for Joseph, to a point that John thinks that she’s as terrified of disappointing him as he is—

Had been reported dead. 

Killed. 

By the hands of the deputy, as well as Faith’s bunker being blown sky-high, without so much as a petal of Bliss flowers left behind, a hint of Bliss gas lingering in the air after it’d dissolved in the air or a single one of her angels - with their dead eyes, mouths sewn shut behind those unassuming masks, brains scrambled to little more than malleable mush and violent tissue. 

John doesn’t blame Rook for blowing up Faith’s bunker.

But he was irritated, frustrated and outraged at the audacity she has, killing his sister - dead, she’s dead, by the hands of the person who The Resistance insists is their saving grace, but John doesn’t remember any tales of noble heroes slaughtering young women to such a gruesome extent that nobody was able to find her remains.

When word spreads that Faith’s region has been liberated, when Joseph gives that heartbreaking eulogy about their dear sister, their darling Faith, when The Resistance views this not only as a victory but a Renaissance - their heroic deputy had freed one region in little less than a month, to start grinding his teeth - an old habit that he hasn’t forgotten, that he desperately wants to but has become one of his various coping mechanisms after getting clean. 

Then there’s talk in his frequency - from his panicked, anxious followers, who’ve all heard tales of the infamous deputy who’d shed that authoritative skin, embraced the monster that people hide under layers upon layers of fake smiles, polite talk, an unbreakable facade that nobody could’ve believe was a ruse until her gun was at their head, her knife at their throat, her fists rendering them to nothing but mangled heaps of flesh and blood - that Rook was heading into his territory next.

And John can do nothing but watch as one crass, brutal deputy rages through his region, stealing from his supply trucks that’d been on their way to make deliveries to his bunker (giving aforementioned supplies back to the civilians who’d refused to hand them over pleasantly, easily, amicably), rescuing civilians from their chance at redemption, blowing his silos to hell, destroying the sign that’d been one of his many pride and joys, liberating outposts that’d been thriving with the strongest, more capable of his people, only for the cancerous, rebellious sinners of Holland Valley to take control of the businesses. 

Then one day, watching isn’t enough - he aches to feel the skin of chaos and destruction incarnate, to taste the lips of violence and bloodshed, to hear the vicious, thunderous, grounding beat of her heart. 

John thought that, once he’d done that, he’d simply get rid of her - not too soon, obviously, this atonement would take days, weeks, months before he’d let her go for tainting The Garden of Eden without any concern for what he and his brothers had worked so far.

The last thing he expected was to become addicted to such a deliciously sinful heathen. 

Much less fall in love with her. 

•

It comes out of nowhere.

That’s the worst part.

One morning, Rook finds John in his bathroom, towel slung loosely around his hips, huddled by his ornate tub like a child hiding from a thunderstorm, hands clamped over his ears, unintelligible pleas spilling from his lips.

The soaked hair and beads of water clinging to his skin, soaking through the towel around his body, leaking tiny puddles beneath him spell out that he’s fresh out of the bath, but with the way he’s curled into himself, she has no idea if he’d simply sunken to his knees once he’d stepped out or had crumbled to the ground from a nasty fall. 

“John? John, baby - look at me.”

He’s helped her out of her attacks.

Rook prays to the God that he and his brother so devoutly believe in that she can help John out of his.

With soft words and delicate pleas for John to return, Rook waits until his eyes lose that petrified, eerie stare and focus on her. 

“Rook...? C-can’t...  I can’t breathe.”

John’s fingers scrabble for his throat, like there’s something suffocating him, robbing him of every ounce of oxygen.

But there’s nothing under his fingers except his bare skin. 

This breaks Rook into pieces.

“That’s all right, John. We can fix that. Can you give me your hands?”

Takes a few seconds for the words to register in his mind, but when they do, John nods slowly, because he doesn’t trust his voice at the moment.

Rook slowly reaches for his hands, the words on her tongue falling upon deaf ears due to the sheer, loud rushing blood in his ears, so excruciating that his head throbs but the quiet, gentle, reassuring tone is what calms John down.

With a pace that could’ve given John ample time to jolt out of her touch if he wanted to, Rook laces her fingers through his, raises one of his hands to rest above her chest, holds it against her heart, presses his opposite hand against his own chest.

“Do you feel that, John?” Rook asks, quiet, like she’s sharing a secret between the two of them, even though they’re the only people in his ranch. 

_Thump, thump, thump._

Strong. Calm. Steady.

John wants to get lost in this feeling.

“We’re going to get there. We’re going to get our hearts to beat together. Feel how I’m breathing? I want you to copy me.” 

John doesn’t think he can do it, not with how fast the air is scraping down his throat, burning his lungs, how fast his heart is thrashing in his chest, bordering the line of arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. 

“Look at me, John. You can do this. You aren’t alone, sweetheart. I’m here. I’m right here. In... Hold... Out... That’s it...  Just breathe, okay?”

Hearing those words come out of Rook’s mouth is enough for his outrageous heartbeat to simmer down a bit - not enough for the panic to stop eating under his skin, wanting so bad to scratch, to bleed and let this anxiety pool out of him, leak into the floorboards, never to be seen again, nothing but a vivid,  tenacious bad dream.

•

“This doesn’t make any sense,” John chokes out, voice thick with the overwhelming surge of emotion, eyes burning with tears of shame and embarrassment. 

“That’s okay, sweetheart. Panic attacks aren’t anything to be afraid of. When they happen, as fucking terrifying as they are, you’re going to be okay. Saying that it’s the worst waiting game of the century is an understatement, but—“

“No. This—  _you_ don’t make any sense.”

Rook doesn’t say anything, but the confusion in her eyes is tangible, the adorable way her head tilts to one side evoking a smile despite everything that’s happening - that’s happened and that will happen - and John can’t help the laugh that breaks loose from his throat, a tinge of mania, but not the psychotic flavor, the undeniable hint of disbelief replacing it.

“_‘And so Hell followed the Whitehorse...’_ You were supposed to kill Faith... You were supposed to kill me... You’re supposed to kill Jacob... But you aren’t going to do that either, are you?”

It isn’t a desperate plea for his brother’s life. 

It’s a rhetorical question, because he knows that she wouldn’t. 

That she won’t.

“Well, I already have two... That’s halfway down. Believe it or not, I’m in the business of collecting gorgeous psychopaths.” 

Rook teases, good-natured and sweet, running her fingers through his hair, an action that has John melting under her touch, butting his head up against her hand like a touch-starved creature.

“Let’s get you off the floor, huh? I’ll grab you something to where from the closet and—  _oomph!” _

His lips cover hers before she can finish the sentence, swallowing the statement whole, taking the perfect opportunity of her parted lips to slip his tongue in, to curl against hers, the various flavors of nicotine and alcohol enough to make him think he doesn’t have to smoke or drink ever again, not as long as he has this - has her - spilling across his palate, alongside the unmistakable, delicious taste of her beneath it.

The last thing Rook wants is for this to stop - fuck, they’ve done this so much, so often that her hands find their perch cradling the back of his head and around the small of his back of their own volition - but this isn’t an adrenaline fuck or a terrified assurance that he was alive.

John is coming out of a panic attack.

Rook’s a fucked-up person, but she has to have a morsel of self-restraint, dammit.

Tugging lightly at his hair, Rook‘s able to break the kiss, put enough distance between them for her to voice her concern (only one of many, by this point).

“Baby, I’m not sure this—“

_“Please, Rook,”_ John whimpers. 

“John... I don’t...”

The look in his teary blue eyes shatters her heart to pieces, those shards piercing her lungs as she takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, thoughts clashing inside her head, a wicked headache threatening to split her skull open.

“... Are you sure this is what you want?”

John nods, desperate, close to begging. 

Fuck, if she wants him to beg, he will. 

_“I need you.”_

_I still fail_

_To understand_

_What it is_

_About this woman._

John stirs the next morning, bleary-eyed but rested, satiated, calm.

That can only mean one thing.

Rook had stayed the night.

Usually, she’s out the door (or window, depending on his guards’ shifts) before he wakes, but always leaves behind a note and a freshly-made breakfast downstairs.

But today...

Today, when he wakes, he’s entangled in someone’s arms - one around his back, one draped around his shoulders - and when he glances up, his heart leaps into his throat.

She hadn’t left. 

She’s here.

She stayed.

John loses himself in this tranquility after the storm of yesterday...

When his heart had been beating so fast that it was cracking his ribs and bruising his lungs.

When Rook appeared like an angel extinguishing hellfire, her mere presence like a breath of fresh air in a room overflowing with smoke.

When she’d rested his right hand over his heart and his left hand over hers, his heart synchronizing with hers, beating calmly, strongly, fiercely together.

When he hadn’t only been brought back from the brink, a drowning man greedily drinking every sip of oxygen when he breaks the surface, but saved him from his greatest fear.

Himself.

John isn’t sure what it is about Rook.

Be it her crude sense of humor, her vivacious laughter, her merciless snark, her beautiful smile, her sharp wit, her stunning eyes, her insatiable hunger, her heartwarming kindness...

John isn’t sure what it is about Rook - is likely a combination of all of the above, but there’s one thing John knows without a doubt, his arms tightening around her, his lips melding to the steady beat of her pulse, tongue dipping out to taste the delicious skin just as his teeth find the juncture of her neck and shoulder, where he’d sunk his canines to stifle his howl when his orgasm crashed into him like a tsunami encased in a hurricane gift-wrapped in a typhoon.

_He will never let his darling go. _


End file.
